Toshiba brings a 21:9 Ultrabook out next to its conventional 16:9 model.

A 21:9 aspect ratio Ultrabook will be arriving in stores soon, alongside the next generation of Toshiba's standard Ultrabook, the Portege Z930/935. Both notebooks will use Intel's Ivy Bridge processors and come with SSDs, backlit keyboards, and at least 7.5 hours of battery life.

The 21:9 Ultrabook, named U845W, is definitely an odd duck. Our initial impulse was to point and laugh—it seemed to be made exclusively for people who compulsively seek wider ground to watch 2.35:1 aspect-ratio movies, an odd niche to cater to. But Duc Dang, senior manager of product development at Toshiba, pointed out to us that customers could also use it to display a regular 16:9 movie side-by-side with a browser. Um, yep, we've tried to do that (with limited success) on our laptops.

The screen, which still has 768 lines of resolution (a bit lower than we'd like on a 14-inch laptop, but serviceable) can also show Excel cell columns from A to AA. The machine certainly won't meet everyone's design needs, but when you think of it as a portable dual-monitor setup, it seems less silly. The notebook has a resolution of 1792x768, weighs 3.5 pounds, and measures 0.82 inches thick. Ethernet, HDMI, and 3 USB 3.0 ports adorn the sides, and the computer gets around 7.5 hours of battery life.

The Toshiba Portege Z935, which looks almost identical to the Z835

The more conventional Ultrabook option, the 13-inch Portege Z930/935, is Toshiba's followup to the Z830/835 that we reviewed last fall. The body remains materially the same, except it now has a total of three USB 3.0 ports, according to Toshiba. Retaining the body from the last model is an unfortunate choice on the company's part, as one of our main complaints about the Z830 was its flimsy build quality.

On the positive side, this means the notebook is still extremely light and thin at 0.63 inches and 2.5 pounds, making Toshiba one of the few manufacturers committing to the Ultrabook ideal we'd like to see out of PC makers (and it appears to be working out—the company has captured 35 percent of the Ultrabook market so far, according to Dang). The battery will last 8 hours and 21 minutes, and the new iteration adds a very welcome option for a 1600x900 screen (standard is 1366x768).

Both notebooks will launch with Windows 7 but will have Windows 8 upgrades available when the OS is ready for launch. Toshiba did not specify whether the notebooks will use the new dual-core Ivy Bridge processors, or their quad-core predecessors. The U845W starts at $999.99 and will be available July 14, while the Z930/935 will start at $928.99 and arrive during the first week of July.

Promoted Comments

It's an interesting design. I can't open my laptop on a plane because it is too tall. Width gets around that. Although this is based on a little 13", whereas I have a 17". This is probably still narrower than that.

It would be more interesting, though, if they based it on a 1600x900 display instead of a weak 1366x768. That would give it about 2100 pixels of width. Plenty of room for two applications side by side.

192 posts | registered Jun 27, 2011

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

P.S. Having a bit of give in the screen is not equal to flimsy build quality, I own a z830 and it is no surprise they have 35% market share. At £680 in the UK versus £1100 for an equivalent macbook air they are aggressively targeting the market and currently winning it.

P.P.S the battery/weight alone are reason enough, its lighter than the toshiba thrive (at100) 10" tablet...

It's an interesting design. I can't open my laptop on a plane because it is too tall. Width gets around that. Although this is based on a little 13", whereas I have a 17". This is probably still narrower than that.

It would be more interesting, though, if they based it on a 1600x900 display instead of a weak 1366x768. That would give it about 2100 pixels of width. Plenty of room for two applications side by side.

Wide screen is totally inconvenient for reading or writing text or looking through the webpage. VERTICAL space is VERY important when the monitor is less than 20 inches. 16:9 is very bad already.

I bought my 4:3 (mat) Dell for 1800$ long ago. But now they all, from dell to apple losing a customer. I dont buy a new laptop for a few years just because there are no new laptops with 4:3 screen ratio.

Wide screen is totally inconvenient for reading or writing text or looking through the webpage. VERTICAL space is VERY important when the monitor is less than 20 inches. 16:9 is very bad already.

I bought my 4:3 (mat) Dell for 1800$ long ago. But now they all, from dell to apple losing a customer. I dont buy a new laptop for a few years just because there are no new laptops with 4:3 screen ratio.

Well maybe web developers should start making websites designed around wide screen displays? Its not that hard of a stretch! Hell they had no problem making every site optimized for an iPad - I guarantee there are more wide screen displays than iPads...

it seemed to be made exclusively for people who compulsively seek wider ground to watch anamorphic widescreen movies

Anamorphic has nothing to do with what you are referring to. The 21:9 aspect ratio is generally called 'scope'. Anamorphic only refers to one of two things: Shooting a wide aspect ratio movie with anamorphic lenses to use the whole film frame for better resolution, and then projecting it back using lenses that undo the expansion; or doing a similar expansion of a digital file to use the entire "frame", rather than wasting storage space on compressed black bars, then flagging the decoder to resize the frame back down to its intended height on playback.

Scope movies compressed for DVD still end up compressing black bars as the anamorphic expansion were designed for the 16:9 ratio being used in the 4:3 space. I'm not sure if blu-ray does it at all since it was designed for 16:9 to begin with.

I can't imagine the sort of people who care about maximizing the screen used to watch movies are the same people who watch movies on laptops though.

Wide screen is totally inconvenient for reading or writing text or looking through the webpage. VERTICAL space is VERY important when the monitor is less than 20 inches. 16:9 is very bad already.

I bought my 4:3 (mat) Dell for 1800$ long ago. But now they all, from dell to apple losing a customer. I dont buy a new laptop for a few years just because there are no new laptops with 4:3 screen ratio.

Well maybe web developers should start making websites designed around wide screen displays? Its not that hard of a stretch! Hell they had no problem making every site optimized for an iPad - I guarantee there are more wide screen displays than iPads...

This site is a perfect example.... no wide screen optimization...

No. Reading text 200 characters wide is inconvenient, there is nothing web developers can do about it, other than put useless pictures, spam, ads. So you will have useless stuff horizontally instead of useful text vertically.

And NO. You probably missed the part about writing text). Vertical space is very useful to see the text around. You might make inconvenient 200 chars wide text, but in case of software code you would not do that.

Well, its hardware developers who should start making laptops for people who read and write text or software code. I believe I am not the only person who writes text and want to spend money on laptop with good mat 4:3 monitor.Well they ALL used to make 4:3 monitors on laptops. Its not that hard of a stretch!

Honestly, odd looking, but I can legitimately use it for work while traveling. I abhor reviewing reports on the road, because I would need to switch between the main document and support analysis. Having those side-by-side would be good.

Just being able to place two open spreadsheets side by side, or a spreadsheet next to a code window would be awesome.

I use a 16:9 screen for work right now (2028x1152), and it's still sometimes a tight squeeze getting everything to sit side by side and not have to fiddle with horizontal scroll bars.

szh - your experience is based on your own personal taste and work style. Wide suits me better. In the past, if this wasn't true then people would not bother getting dual and triple monitor setups. But they are in strong demand in the working world...particularly if you code a lot.

it seemed to be made exclusively for people who compulsively seek wider ground to watch anamorphic widescreen movies

Anamorphic has nothing to do with what you are referring to. The 21:9 aspect ratio is generally called 'scope'. Anamorphic only refers to one of two things: Shooting a wide aspect ratio movie with anamorphic lenses to use the whole film frame for better resolution, and then projecting it back using lenses that undo the expansion; or doing a similar expansion of a digital file to use the entire "frame", rather than wasting storage space on compressed black bars, then flagging the decoder to resize the frame back down to its intended height on playback.

Scope movies compressed for DVD still end up compressing black bars as the anamorphic expansion were designed for the 16:9 ratio being used in the 4:3 space. I'm not sure if blu-ray does it at all since it was designed for 16:9 to begin with.

I can't imagine the sort of people who care about maximizing the screen used to watch movies are the same people who watch movies on laptops though.

Good call, I will edit the text to reflect this. I just meant 2.35:1 video, I had mistakenly thought "anamorphic" was the term for that aspect ratio. I believe there are at least some movies that put an extra-crazy widescreen version (2.35/2.39/2.41:1) on the DVD/BD along with the normal 16:9, but I could be wrong.

Wide screen is totally inconvenient for reading or writing text or looking through the webpage. VERTICAL space is VERY important when the monitor is less than 20 inches. 16:9 is very bad already.

I bought my 4:3 (mat) Dell for 1800$ long ago. But now they all, from dell to apple losing a customer. I dont buy a new laptop for a few years just because there are no new laptops with 4:3 screen ratio.

Well maybe web developers should start making websites designed around wide screen displays? Its not that hard of a stretch! Hell they had no problem making every site optimized for an iPad - I guarantee there are more wide screen displays than iPads...

This site is a perfect example.... no wide screen optimization...

No. Reading text 200 characters wide is inconvenient, there is nothing web developers can do about it, other than put useless pictures, spam, ads. So you will have useless stuff horizontally instead of useful text vertically.

And NO. You probably missed the part about writing text). Vertical space is very useful to see the text around. You might make inconvenient 200 chars wide text, but in case of software code you would not do that.

Well, its hardware developers who should start making laptops for people who read and write text or software code. I believe I am not the only person who writes text and want to spend money on laptop with good mat 4:3 monitor.Well they ALL used to make 4:3 monitors on laptops. Its not that hard of a stretch!

Websites need to conform to different resolutions and ratios - this is not being done. I have no issues (for instance) with my Google email on a 4x3 or 16x9 or 16x10 or what ever, it works well at almost any usable resolution. wide screen displays are not going away - and people need to work with them not against them. I am constantly placing windows side-by side when doing work, and this is just not possible in a 4x3 environment - there is just not enough horizontal space. This is my use scenario and not yours and I understand that, but to say you want 4x3 back is just crazy...

Web designers and software designers need to make their layout work better in these environments... Some do it well, and some dont...

Just being able to place two open spreadsheets side by side, or a spreadsheet next to a code window would be awesome.

I use a 16:9 screen for work right now (2028x1152), and it's still sometimes a tight squeeze getting everything to sit side by side and not have to fiddle with horizontal scroll bars.

szh - your experience is based on your own personal taste and work style. Wide suits me better. In the past, if this wasn't true then people would not bother getting dual and triple monitor setups. But they are in strong demand in the working world...particularly if you code a lot.

I do prefer a reasonably wide screen to display windows side by side. Regarding wide text however, I agree with szh, 200 chars is too wide. A quick google search (also search stack overflow for preferred line lengths) indicates many designers and coders agree there is an upper limit to how much text width our eyes can handle. 200 would certainly exceed the limit, although where this limit occurs is debatable. do you use widescreen displays exclusively for text side by side, or do you read anything at screen width? I'd bet most people would prefer the former, which means that a maximized browser on a pc is wasting a lot of real estate.

This could work incredibly well with Windows 8, where "fullscreen" Metro apps don't have to fill the screen, they can take up a portion of it. It'd be rather easy to segregate off a chunk of the screen to watch a movie and do a couple of other things

Basically it depends on how you look at it. I see it as the average 13" ultrabook with a bit extra screen for multitasking.

Just being able to place two open spreadsheets side by side, or a spreadsheet next to a code window would be awesome.

I use a 16:9 screen for work right now (2028x1152), and it's still sometimes a tight squeeze getting everything to sit side by side and not have to fiddle with horizontal scroll bars.

szh - your experience is based on your own personal taste and work style. Wide suits me better. In the past, if this wasn't true then people would not bother getting dual and triple monitor setups. But they are in strong demand in the working world...particularly if you code a lot.

I do prefer a reasonably wide screen to display windows side by side. Regarding wide text however, I agree with szh, 200 chars is too wide. A quick google search (also search stack overflow for preferred line lengths) indicates many designers and coders agree there is an upper limit to how much text width our eyes can handle. 200 would certainly exceed the limit, although where this limit occurs is debatable. do you use widescreen displays exclusively for text side by side, or do you read anything at screen width? I'd bet most people would prefer the former, which means that a maximized browser on a pc is wasting a lot of real estate.

On my 1920x1200 display, I almost never have the browser full screen. Many sites (such as this one) add borders so it would be wasted anyway. Generally I have the browser 2/3rds of the screen width, with other windows on the side. Sometimes half and half with another document on the side. But I like this arrangement far better than switching between applications and only seeing one at once.

Wide screen is totally inconvenient for reading or writing text or looking through the webpage. VERTICAL space is VERY important when the monitor is less than 20 inches. 16:9 is very bad already.

I bought my 4:3 (mat) Dell for 1800$ long ago. But now they all, from dell to apple losing a customer. I dont buy a new laptop for a few years just because there are no new laptops with 4:3 screen ratio.

Yep .. rocking a Dell D830 with a 1900x1200 15.4 for this very reason. Screen real estate is far more important than processing power, to me.

I am constantly placing windows side-by side when doing work, and this is just not possible in a 4x3 environment - there is just not enough horizontal space. This is my use scenario and not yours and I understand that, but to say you want 4x3 back is just crazy...

I don't understand what you can do at, say, 1600x900 that becomes impossible at 1600x1200